Clown Car Base

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So you've got a two-person pup tent set up in the woods. Two guys get out. Then another four guys. Then another six guys...

No, there is no way all of them could possibly fit into that thing. It is a Clown Car Base.

A common variation in animation and comics is for a character to live in a structure barely larger than himself, but constantly drop hints that it is considerably more spacious than it appears; the actual interior of the structure is never shown.

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Examples:

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Anime & Manga

While infiltrating the Hidden Rain, Jiraiya of Naruto used one of his toad summons as a mobile base. On the inside, it was cavernous; on the outside, it was the size of a normal toad. Watching him pull himself out of the toad's mouth without its size changing was interesting to say the least.

Comedy

Inverted in a way by French comedian Florence Foresti in her gig about the Barbie Airplane, in which she points out how the inside of the plane is much smaller (or less furnished) than it's made to look on the outside. A rough translation:

"[...] Barbie Big Fat Liar. Why? How many seats in this plane, you think? (shows the 4 windows on the plane) I'm asking you people sitting at the front, of course... 4? Ah, 8? I see the maths sup and maths spé are here today too (imitating a Dumb Blonde) "Of course, there's 2 rows!". So yes, 4 or 8, that's what we'd like to believe. Except that, Barbie Big Fat Liar (opens up plane), 3 seats. You're expecting some nice people, a great atmosphere, and all you find is 3 crappy seats."

Comic Books

In "Superman & Batman vs Aliens & Predator", Superman brings his Fortress of Solitude to a volcano to evacuate the Aliens and Predators who have been stranded there for thousands of years, along with the Predator ship. On the outside the fortress is roughly 4 meters in diameter and spherical, but the inside is an entire dead universe he is free to decorate as he chooses.

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Comic Strips

In Jim Davis's U.S. Acresnote later adapted as segments of the animated Garfield and Friends show, one-off mentions of things like his TV show add up to make the inside of Sheldon's eggshell downright palatial. No wonder he doesn't want to fully hatch. His feet are also always sticking out of the bottom. That alone makes it probably the most unusual example on this page by a wide margin!

Snoopy's doghouse is much larger than it seems. Sometimes implied (or even stated) to be an elaborate basement, but whenever the (tiny) visible structure is destroyed, he behaves as if the entire house is gone. And, perversely, he chooses to sleep on top of the thing, even in the rain or cold!

A few strips have Snoopy building a birdhouse for Woodstock, which turns out to be another (bird-sized) Clown Car Base.

A recurring gag in Funky Winkerbean involved Funky doing things inside his locker that should have been impossible, like roasting hot dogs on a fire.

Fan Works

The Two Year Emperor: the city of Gryfhammr is constructed out of thousands and thousands of nested portable holes. Due to their extradimensional nature and the branching pattern they formed (each hole contained several additional holes) the city was able to hold hundreds of thousands of people and yet all of them were within easy walking distance of the single main exit.

Films — Live-Action

Resident Evil: Extinction From a steel freight crate seven by fifteen feet, that is open and partially empty (the view fades to an ominous jet black), dozens of zombies come running out. The scene and the zombiestream lasts for several minutes.

In Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, over eighty children of all ages come out of a small apartment in one continuous cut. Of course it's all the more impressive how they all must have come out of the same mother...

In Monty Python's Life of Brian, a group of few dozen Roman soldiers are inspecting an apartment so small it couldn't possibly fit half of the group in. And still they manage not to find any of the dozen Jewish revolutionaries hidden inside the place. Not even after re-checking.

In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Mr. Weasley borrows a tent from a friend of his for use at the World Quidditch Cup. What seems like a small (3'x5') tent outside has at least 3 bedrooms, a kitchen and a dining room inside. As Harry gets his first look, he mutters happily, "I love magic!"

Played for Drama in Gaunt's Ghosts novel His Last Command. No one can figure out how so many Chaos troops are emerging from the admittedly large rooms the Guard is assaulting. Turns out that there are warp portals through which they emerge, on the other side of which are vast armies.

Wizarding tents in Harry Potter work this way: Sure, the LOOK like a regular two-person tent on the outside. But on the INSIDE, it's roughly a fourth of a circus tent, complete with kitchen and numerous bunk beds. And those are the ordinary-looking ones.

This also seems to be a fairly common thing to do with cars. Both Mr. Weasley's Ford Anglia and a couple cars used by the Ministry of Magic are magically enlarged on the inside to comfortably seat over twice as many people as could be squeezed in normally.

Death's house in the Discworld series, from the outside it looks fairly normal, if a bit morbid, but inside... Death's study is reckoned to be about a mile square, and it apparently isn't the biggest room. This has as much to do with Death just not understanding physics as anything else. In the land his house occupies, the ominous mountains in the distance are actually fairly close to the house; they simply look far away because they're literally blurry, which is all Death really cares about.

A vicar motions two gravediggers to get out of a grave they're digging. They do so, and then several others get out: 6 more gravediggers, two miners, two men in uniform (possibly escaping prisoners), a police dog and its handler, and a surfboarder. Watch it on YouTubehere. This could be called a Clown-Car Grave but that name has already been used for another trope altogether.

In the scene immediately before, four undertakers are carrying a coffin, only for each of them to collapse one by one. Every time one of them falls, the other men in the group promptly put down the coffin, place the undertaker inside, and then move on. By the end this coffin made for one man contains five people (all four of the undertakers plus the body they were originally carrying), resulting in the coffin somehow moving on its own towards the grave, resulting in the aforementioned sequence.

The Goodies episode about the Rolf Harris plague has a take-off of the Pied Piper of Hamilton, which includes the Rolf Harris "attacking the babies in their cradles". Later when the Goodies draw them out of the city by playing "Waltzing Matilda" on didgeridoos, an endless stream of Rolfs are seen clambering out of the one baby carriage.

Played with on the SCTV "Fishin' Musician" segment - host John Candy and musical guests The Tubes are seen on a typical 16mm 'outdoors show' film leaving a little cabin; Candy narrates "There's that lodge we stayed at there, it looks small there, but it goes down four hundred feet, sleeps eight hundred..."

Doctor Who has the TARDIS, which is the trope namer for Bigger on the Inside, but there have been numerous cases of areas mentioned but never seen. For example, it has a library, and a swimming pool (which once fell into the library when the TARDIS landed on its side), and even hallways, many of which are apparently past incarnations of it that came with each regeneration. The swimming pool was also seen in the Fourth Doctor's era, when the Doctor and co are chased through the ship by Sontarans.

Oscar the Grouch's garbage can on Sesame Street has often been portrayed this way.

Puppet Shows

On Sesame Street, Oscar the Grouch has at least one elephant living in his trash can. And a swimming pool. And even Mr. Snuffleupagus himself once payed the grouch a visit - his snuffle was seen first coming out as he was leaving the trash can (and after five kids came out of it first!).

Radio

On Our Miss Brooks, the episode "Oo-Me-Me Tocoludi Gucci Moo Moo" has the gang squeeze into a tiny trailer.

Tabletop Games

In Monsterpocalypse, some units have the "transport" ability while others have "cargo," with the former able to drop off infinite numbers of the latter. This can be explained with Units Not to Scale for the pods or Sizeshifter for the Shinobi, but the 60-ft tall Mechacthugrosh storing that many of the 15-ft tall Mecha Taskmasters?

Video Games

Every strategy game ever.

Total Annihilation and Spiritual SuccessorSupreme Commander are notable aversions, you can actually see the units being produced in a properly-scaled building and they have to clear the production platform before the next one can start. It's especially notable with certain giant units: Total Annihilation's Krogath was so big it needed it's own specialized factory to produce, and Supreme Commander's "experimental" tire units are so big they're placed and constructed like buildings.

Zigzagged in StarCraft, due largely to Units Not to Scale: the sprite for a Terran siege tank is roughly the same size as a dropship, but the dropship can fit two. On the other hand, the bunker seems big enough to fit four infantry.

Command & Conquer: Renegade played with this. In the single player campaign the surface buildings from the RTS game are clearly too small, but only because they're just the entrance to sprawling underground complexes. Then in multiplayer the same buildings consist of one or two small rooms.

Can happen in Left 4 Dead and its sequel thanks to the algorithms of the AI Director. When a random horde spawns to charge the players they'll all spawn in the same area, usually just out of sight of the survivors. This occasionally leads to comical clown car circumstances, where 30 zombies come charging out of a single bathroom stall. The best examples are closets and small rooms that you just cleared and walked out of literally 5 seconds ago. Where were they all hiding? It's entirely possible for a horde to spawn behind and come piling out from behind a small stack of boxes.

Used liberally in Gauntlet Legends. The bases have three sizes each, and the size determines the toughness of the monsters that come out.

Ace Combat games have from time to time bases that can keep spawning enemies until destroyed.

Seen most prominently in 5 Where the Scinfaxi/Hrimfaxi spawn VTOL and STOL / Drone Aircraft from them despite them being (granted, extremely large) ICBM carrying submarines. Also the penultimate mission, which begins right after the Aircraft Carrier Kestrel (which has been your team's base for majority of recent missions) is starting to sink, and the crew says you and your squadron can launch with ANY aircraft that you had purchased, not just carrier based aircraft. And the player can potentially have over 200+ Aircraft total for them and their squadron.

1 (known originally as Air Combat), Zero, X, X2/Joint Assault and 6 gives us Airborne Fortresses/Bombers/Carriers that have a number of Escort Fighter squadrons on board that can launch from them that you have to destroy. And despite their ungodly sizes, laws of physics defying sizes there is still no way to justify having as many aircraft, in combination to their bomb bays, missile launchers, AA guns, and super weapons which include ICBMs with essentially a non-nuclear Fantastic Nuke, and even exotic things such as a "Shockwave Cannon" and lasers. Where is it even possible to fit enough hanger space, munitions, fuel, etc for these escorts?

In Machines: Wired For War, units can be significantly too large to fit inside the building that created them and transport unit can carry units larger themselves inside them. This is partially justified by teleporting technology.

Star Ruler has Quantum Space Compressors allowing you to do this. At high levels of Spatial Dynamics research, it gets... impressive. Even without them you can build ships or stations bigger than the constructor used.

Breeding pens in Farmville can hold up to 40 animals when fully expanded. This is reasonable for rabbits and other small creatures, but gets ridiculous with horse paddocks, cattle yards, and especially zoos, which can be stuffed full of 40 elephants.

In Growl, Round 5 ends with an encounter against a tank that has nine mooks inside it.

Most space stations in the X-Universe series dock ships on external berths, which avert the trope. But some stations can dock ships up to heavy fighter size internally (and certain shipyards can do the same with ships of up to corvette and freighter size). There is no limit to the number of ships that can dock internally. One popular mod adds internal docking (and a pair of capital ship docking clamps) to player-built factory complexes, making them pretty easy to defend: just stuff a few dozen fighters inside (pocket change in the late game) and have them launch as needed; out-of-sectorcombat modeling does the rest.

The creature lairs in Star Wars: Galaxies were subject to this, being far too small to house the typical dozen or so creatures that would emerge from one upon being attacked, let alone fit even one of them inside. It got especially ridiculous in the case of the biggest creatures like krayt dragons, where the lair was about the size of one of their feet.

In Pikmin, only 100 Pikmin can venture onto the surface at any given time as a survival mechanism so only up to 100 can be lost at one time. However, the Onions themselves can have an enormous number of them inside (up to 999 in the first game, 99,999 in the second, which is far more Pikmin than you'll ever need in either game).

Averted in GoldenEye (1997), where each stage has a set number of enemies. A common tactic on levels with Natalya is to clear out the stage first due to her rather suicidal habit of running right between you and the enemies.

Kingdom Rush and its sequels has you placing these. Strategic use of barracks is a must, as they will produce three soldiers to stand in the path of the incoming Zerg Rush and delay them (perhaps even kill them) while your ranged towers whale on the busy enemies; barracks continuously spawn a soldier every ten-to-fifteen seconds (depending on the tower) whenever the number drops below three (save for one of the possible upgrade paths in Origins which can only support two). Needless to say, Iron Challenges that do not allow the player to place barracks are some of the hardest levels in the game — though some mitigate it by having plenty of mercenary outposts (themselves another example of this trope), although each individual soldier costs you money.

A van by a supermarket in No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle will dispense thugs and grunts from its rear again and again. By the time it's emptied, Travis will have defeated at least 35 enemies from that van.

Vector Thrust has the EOS-14 fortress/bunker thing which starts vomiting MiG-29s out of its single aircraft lift without pause after you damage it enough.

Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has the Imp Porter zombie, who places down a tent once it reaches a gold tile. Said tent will continuously spawn Adventurer Zombies (and their cone/bucket variants) until it's destroyed.

Dawn of War: Units in transports or bunkers take up the same space regardless of whether they're at full strength or down to the last man. Thus you can have a single Chimera transport unload upwards of fifty soldiers in one go, while an Imperial Headquarters's guns are just as efficiently manned by the aforementioned 50+ soldiers or just any three people hanging around (including their Worker Units). Imperial Guard buildings are all part of a Tunnel Network, so you can send any squad bunkered in one building to another after a delay, though the number of squads that can be removed at once is limited.

Fallout 4: An unskippable moment shows you a closeup view of the Headquarters of the Brotherhood of Steel. It's quite small. It holds unlimited people and helicopters, depending on how you play the game.

The Mothership in Splatoon 2 will dispense small Drop Ships that spawn Chum and Cohock enemies—so small, they're actually smaller than the Cohocks that come out from them.

Halo Wars: Bases can pump out more units that they look like they can hold. The most outstanding example is the Elephant, a miniature mobile base that can create up to 200 infantry that looks like it can hold at most just ten. The one exception is creating Vultures, which are so big they're dropped off directly from the Spirit of Fire mothership in orbit instead of emerging from the base.

Web Original

As revealed in the animation "Where's The Cheat?", The Cheat from Homestar Runner actually lives in the King of Town's grill. Occasionally, we actually get to see Strong Sad be stuffed inside the grill, and in one Strong Bad Email, there is actually a pizza parlor inside the grill, and both Strong Bad and The Cheat actually fit inside the grill.

Many looped animations circulating the Internet have carefully crafted to make mundane objects in real life appear to act this way (for example, to the trash! [note: contains audio]).

Played with in the Looney Tunes cartoon "Rabbit Every Monday". During the cartoon, Yosemite Sam forces Bugs Bunny into his old wood-burning oven, and prepares to add wood to the fire. Bugs at one point emerges from the oven door and asks Sam, "You got a bottle opener on ya?" He then emerges from the oven for a moment, and returns to the oven with a bucket of ice and some folding chairs, and then pops out again to empty some ashtrays. Every time he opens the oven door, Dixieland music is heard playing. Finally, he opens the door and asks Sam, "Ain't ya comin' in, Mac? The girls have been askin' for ya." Sam, suddenly excited, slicks his hair back and enters the oven, expecting a party. Bugs gets second thoughts and opens the door to tell Sam it was all just a gag, only to see that there really is a party going on inside the oven. Bugs dives into the oven, and emerges one last time with a party hat and noisemaker, saying, "I don't ask questions, I just have fun!"

Also done with an OLD Popeye cartoon with an Arabian theme. Olive Oyl is captured by an Arab shiek (Brutus) who takes her to his teeny (obviously no more than 3ft by 3ft) little tent in the desert. When she dubiously peeks inside, its palatial; going on and on and on. She draws back outside and then cartoonishly stretches her neck so her head goes all the way around the tent. This is older than color.

In the U.S. Acres segment of Garfield and Friends, Roy and Orson were running for leader of the farm. Every time a chicken entered the voting booth and voted, they fell through a trap door set up by the fox. Roy, who watched the chickens entering the booth, didn't suspect a thing until Orson asked how many got out of it.

Bill Bailey once recounted a tale of people sneaking into Glastonbury by digging a tunnel under the fence that came out under a one-man tent. This is made even funnier when he describes the witnesses who are high on weed or LSD, watching thousands of people just pouring out of this tiny little tent. Something similar to that happened at the Woodstock festival.

There is another joke about this and the Basque, but this time it does not play with their supposed ability, but to the triple stereotype of them supposedly being stubborn, braggarts and gambling-lovers: "How do you fit 20 Basques in a Mini Cooper? By betting they cannot".

Sometimes a thing is just bigger than you think it is, volume-wise, if you're willing to use it in a manner it wasn't designed for. For instance, some soldiers figured out that they can fit fourteen people in a porta potty. YouTube is full of videos similar to this.

Certain tiny apartments in the North End of Boston are well known for achieving this effect whenever a group of people leave it at the same time, especially if it's a party that's been broken up by the cops.

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